’45s’ Joe Hutt

The equinox marks the harvest time, a turning point, an end but also a beginning. The 45s series by Joe Hutt documents the crepuscular
moments after the fun has been had but before its physical memory has faded away, presenting the after: ‘I was there’ in the now: ‘there I am’. The sun tiptoes backwards to its winter hiding place, casting long shadows over what it is leaving behind, transforming what we see. Torsos and staircases are plunged into abstraction. Light fades, clouds build and vision blurs, dislocating what we see from meaningful figuration. Footprints trample over the images – here in the scuffed, sleety ice on the floor beneath an empty playground, there in the cellulite dimpled sandpit after a game of ? Paint, ice and plastic cracks and crackles like dust on a stylus.
The haptic quality of these photographs, the way in which they throb with the lingering touch of fingertips or brushstrokes, imbues them a painterliness that is echoed in their composition. This sense of the painterly seems to protest against the reproducibility of the digital image, cheering for the survival of the aura in the age of mechanical reproduction. While seemingly relating to ideas of absence and the past, these photographs in fact document presence in the present, pulsing with the tangible memory of a bodily encounter like the needle on a record player after the song is over. Bedumsh. Bedumsh. Bedumsh.

Text: Kate Random Love

Joe is a photographer from Ulverston, England, now based in Stockholm.joehutt.com

Special thanks to The Pro Center who have kindly helped with the production of the show.